If you have wondered how you can go about creating your own ESXi image complete with any drivers, such as storage controller drivers or network card drivers then you can use PowerCLI imagebuilder to achieve this. This is helpful if the standard ESXi image is causing a purple screen of death (PSOD) when trying to

Someone once likened esxtop to windows task manager on steroids. When you have a look at the monitoring options available you can see why someone would think that. Esxtop is based on the ‘nix top system tool, used to monitor running applications, services and system processes. It is an interactive task manager that can be used

The vNetwork distributed switch is a vCenter Server managed entity. It is designed to create a consistent switch configuration across every host in the datacentre. It allows port groups and individual port settings and statistics to migrate between ESX(i) hosts in a datacentre, the uses of private VLAN’s (PVLAN) and third party deployment. vCenter Server

Working with ESX(i) log files is important when troubleshooting issues within the virtual environment. You can view and search log files in ESX(i) and in vCenter Server using a few different methods. Methods Using the vSphere client The direct console user interface (DCUI) A web browser A syslog or vMA appliance An SSH connection to

The best way to add iSCSI storage is by utilizing dedicating NIC’s to iSCSI traffic, on dedicated VMkernel switches, with separate IP subnet address ranges and separate physical switches or VLAN’s. Enable Jumbo Frames on a vSwitch To enable Jumbo Frames on a vSwitch, change the MTU configuration for that vSwitch. It is best to start with a new

vMotion has quite a few requirements that need to be in place before it will work correctly. Here is a list of the key requirements for vMotion to work. Each host must be correctly licensed Each host must meet shared storage requirements Each host must meet the networking requirements Each compatible CPU must be from

As technology progresses, storage requirements grow. It seems to be a never ending pattern. I remember only a few years ago the maximum configurable LUN size of 2TB seemed huge. Now it is common to have many LUN carvings making up tens of Terabytes of SAN storage. The downside to all this extra storage is

Having read various books, articles, white papers and best practice guides I have found it difficult to find consistently good advice on vNetwork and physical switch teaming design so I thought I would write my own based on what I have tested and configured myself. To begin with I must say I am no networking

1. Check for a scratch partition in the Software Advanced Settings in the Configuration tab of the vSphere Client. If one doesn’t exist configure one and reboot the host before proceeding with the upgrade. (See here for more info) 2. Download and install the VMware vSphere command line interface. (vSphere CLI) 3. Download the upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.build#-release.zip

01:On a Windows box, download the patch bundle directly from VMware. This will be .zip file. 02:On a Windows box with the vSphere client installed, download and install FastSCP. Create a folder called updates in the var file and copy the upgrade files into the Updates on the ESX host. 03::Obtain local console access, or